Monthly Archives: July 2015

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Foreclosure to Home Free, as 5-Year Clock ExpiresMIAMI – In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments. She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes.

The uncounted: why the US can’t keep track of people killed by policeA year ago, in a bureaucratic shift that went unremarked in the somnolent days before Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri, the US government admitted a disturbing failure. The top crime-data experts in Washington had determined that they could not properly count how many Americans die each year at the hands of police.

Have the Banks Escaped Criminal Prosecution because They’re Spying Surrogates?I’m preparing to do a series of posts on CISA, the bill passed out of SSCI this week that, unlike most of the previous attempts to use cybersecurity to justify domestic spying, may well succeed (I’ve been using OTI’s redline version which shows how SSCI simply renamed things to be able to claim they’re addressing privacy concerns).

Wikipedia sues NSA, DoJ over mass surveillanceThe nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia free online encyclopedia, is preparing a lawsuit against the US National Security Agency and US Department of justice over a mass surveillance program initiated by the government. Wikimedia is heading to court to prove that NSA’s Upstream program gathers foreign intelligence information through capturing communications with “non-US persons,” reports Reuters.

Homeowners burned by mortgage scandal cry foul on LegislatureIt isn’t easy to talk about filing for bankruptcy or losing your home, but as Montana’s Legislature moves to make it more difficult for homeowners to sue the mortgage industry for deceptive practices, tongues are loosening up. Montana Senate lawmakers have passed two bills to undo a landmark court ruling that benefited homeowners who sued big banks for mishandling mortgages.

A Whistleblower’s Horror StoryThis is the age of the whistleblower. From Chelsea Manning to Edward Snowden to the latest cloak-and-dagger lifter of files, ex-HSBC employee Hervé Falciani, whistleblowers are becoming to this decade what rock stars were to the Sixties – pop culture icons, global countercultural heroes. Sidebar Will HSBC Deal Come Back to Haunt Loretta Lynch?

Mindfulness meditation appears to help improve sleep qualityMindfulness meditation practices resulted in improved sleep quality for older adults with moderate sleep disturbance in a clinical trial comparing meditation to a more structured program focusing on changing poor sleep habits and establishing a bedtime routine, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Discontent with Washington, US states look to nullify federal lawsReuters/Mark Leffingwell State legislatures in the US are considering more than 200 bills – from gun rights to marijuana accessibility – that would nullify or work around various federal laws and regulations crafted in Washington, according to a states’ rights advocacy group.

New Mexico sheriff foils IRS attempt to seize resident’s property – reportReuters / Jonathan Alcorn A sheriff in New Mexico physically stopped US Marshals from enforcing Internal Revenue Service orders at a residential property, later calling on the IRS to halt a public auction of the premises until the tax-owing homeowner’s court appeal is heard. According to BenSwann.com, Eddy County (N.M.)